Families may start getting kicked out of the state’s emergency shelter system on Sept. 1, and providers who thought families had until next spring are feeling blindsided.
Lawmakers and Gov. Maura Healey passed a law in April limiting how long families can stay in the emergency shelter system for the first time since the program’s creation. The limits were approved while leaving the state’s right to shelter law in place.
The number of families looking to live in state-funded shelters has more than doubled over the last year and a half. With a cap imposed by Gov. Maura Healey still in place, more than 750 families are on a waitlist to gain entry into those shelters.
Trying to rein in exploding shelter costs, Senate and House negotiators agreed in April to set a nine-month limit for how long families can stay in the state’s emergency shelters, with the option for families to seek up to two 90-day extensions if they are employed, participating in an approved training program, or meet one of a slew of other protected criteria.
Legislators wrote that this section of the law would take effect on June 1, and many homelessness service providers assumed families would start hitting their nine-month limit next spring.
But the branch of Healey’s administration responsible for writing the regulations required under the law are telling providers that families could be getting notice in the mail as early as next week that they will have to leave by Sept. 1 — applying the nine-month limit retroactively from June 1 to the start of 2024.
“We’ve heard [The Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities] and the administration say that the average length of stay is 14 to 16 months. So we’re anticipating that thousands of families will be subjected to early termination based on this policy if they’re not granted extensions,” said Kelly Turley of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless.
The state’s most recent report on emergency family shelter…